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Billionaires fund anti-Trump delegate push

First they spent tens of millions trying to boost their favorite presidential candidates, then they poured cash into ads attacking Donald Trump, and now some of the biggest donors on the right are turning their attention to the delegate fight.
Anti-Trump billionaires are funding ground operations in an increasing number of states to try to ensure the selection of national convention delegates who oppose Trump. The strategy is being executed by the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, which has a stated goal of blocking the bombastic billionaire from clinching the GOP presidential nomination before the party’s convention in July.
Story Continued Belowut the PAC’s officials acknowledge that they likely won’t stop there and that they intend to keep up the pressure all the way through the end of July’s Republican National Convention, possibly including trying to steer the nomination to an alternative candidate.
While engaging in presidential delegate fights is an unprecedented use of super PAC cash, one of Our Principles’ billionaire donors said it’s a smart way to “cover all bases.” And the donor, Minnesota media mogul Stan Hubbard, brushed aside Trump’s increasingly vocal frustration about getting cheated in the battle for delegates.
“There’s nothing unfair about it. He or she who can marshal the most forces and do the best job, will get the nomination,” said Hubbard, who in February donated $10,000 to Our Principles and said he’d consider giving more to the stop-Trump effort.
In the coming weeks and even at the convention, Hubbard said, big donors and super PACs like Our Principles “can certainly try to influence people. I could call a delegate and say what I think, if they’d talk to me. I can buy a billboard. I can run ads. Why not?” Trump’s campaign will also be working to whip delegates, Hubbard noted, “and you’ll have other people trying to do the same thing. So fair is fair.”
Our Principles’ delegate strategy has attracted far less attention — and money — than multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns that have bombarded the televisions, smart phones and mailboxes of regular voters in key primary states like Florida, Wisconsin and New York.
But in some ways, the effort to influence the much smaller universe of party activists who attend state and national party conventions is more notable. It expands the role of major donors and their super PACs into new terrain that until recently was the sole purview of campaigns and party insiders, and it could set the stage for Our Principles to run a privatized whipping operation — and potentially even play kingmaker — at a national convention, where it is increasingly likely that the presidential nomination will be decided in a floor fight where byzantine rules and interpersonal relationships hold sway.